nationally and internationally recognized.All artwork shown on this site has been photographed by Damien Cruz Art Gallery, using specialized equipment that produces Giclée reproductions with outstanding detail and colour fidelity on the highest quality canvas available. They have been coated with an archival quality matt varnish to protect against damage. ArtéSol's images have up to 20 times more detail than a standard 10 megapixel camera. The prints you purchase are validated and ratified by the Cuban artists who painted the original.

Early History The first signs of creative expression In Cuba come from cave painting. Later, the testimonials were the cartographies of the island combined with impressions and myths developed by the chroniclers. Along the long historic path, the mural paintings executed, in the most part anonymously, on the interior and exterior of houses from the colonial period must be mentioned. On the basis of their character and craftsmanship, they have to be labeled "folk art". Natural pigments and some inferior quality colors were used, and the later the paintings were executed, the more complex and higher quality the techniques

The Colonial Period Francisco Javier Báez is the first Cuban graphic artist who, in addition to religious themes, also designed drawings for tobacco and cigar brands in xylography (a technique which was introduced to Cuba in 1723). Foreign graphic artists and illustrators, above all French, came to the island and depicted landscapes, customs and places in the form of albums. The graphic arts, besides their artistic value, were the only means of honestly depicting the events and their consequences, including folklore. The first graphic document on the Toma de la Habana (The capture of Havana) by the English was made by Dominique Serres in the year 1762. The lithographic publication was made one year later in France. The six views of the town, realized by the North American Elías Durnford between 1764 and 1765, form the precursors of the Cuban Scenes by foreign artists in the 19th century.Towards the end of the 18th century the Cuban cultural panorama changed as a result of developments achieved so far, which were mainly due to the growth in the sugar industry. The Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País (Economic Society of the Friends of the Country) was founded, schools and universities multiplied, the public library was expanded and advertisements by teachers of art and portrait painters appeared in the press. The artists were self-taught people who exchanged lessons with each other and were regarded as craftsmen. Estaban Chartrand El baile

José Nicolás Escalera The Holy Trinity

José Nicolás Escalera is considered to be the first Cuban painter. Escalera painted the picture of a negro slave in the mural paintings of the church of Santa María del Rosario for the first time. The 19th century is characterized by the boom in the sugar industry and the growing slave trade. In 1805 the bishop, Juan José Díaz de Espada y Landa, patron of science and art, entrusted an Italian with the frescoes of the Cathedral of Havana. In 1818 Bishop Díaz de Espada y Landa and Alejandro Ramírez founded the Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes. This, the second academy in the Americas, after San Carlos in Mexico, had as its first director the Frenchman and pupil of the Master David, Juan Bautiste Vermay. The style of painting taught reflected European trends at the time. After the death of Juan Bautiste Vermay, the Academy was headed for a short time by a Cuban, then followed mainly a French-Italian sequence of successors until the permanent presence of Miguel Melero, the first Cuban Director in the last five years of the century, which coincided with the halcyon days of the Academy in Cuba. From this time onwards the directorship was to remain firmly in Cuban hands. This is the starting point for continuity in Cuban national painting. New initiatives and changes, such as the admission of women to the Academy, for example, at a time when no other institution offered this opportunity, first appeared under the leadership of this master. Besides his many paintings, he created the picture on the main altar of the chapel at the Cementerio Colón . In this century graphic art is represented by Leonardo Barañano, Hipolito Garneray, Eduardo Laplante and also Federico Mialhe , whose three albums "Scenic Walk ", "Picturesque Island of Cuba " and "The Island of Cuba" form the most complete graphic report. Small lithographic editions, linked to trade and advertisements, appeared from 1822 onwards following the founding of a workshop The brand bands of cigarillos and cigars were produced with great figurative display using lithography. They were the main driving force behind the development, growth and boom in this technique Victor Landaluze El místico del angel

Eduardo Abela Triunfo de la rumba

National painting began to take shape from the mid 19th century onward. Taste and the appreciation of painting developed in Cuba at the same pace as the intellectual environment of the island was infused with new activities. Esteban Chartrand and Valentin Sanz Carta are examples of two opposing points of view, the former, a Cuban of French descent, created nostalgic and idealized landscapes bathed in twilight, in which the Cuban element of bohíos (farmhouses), ingenios (sugar factories) and palms can be recognized, and the latter, a Cuban from the Canaries, offered a more direct and realistic landscape flooded with tropical light. Armando García Menocal and Leopoldo Romañach Guillén contributed to the cultural renewal which found its positive aspect, favored by the new era, the new rulers, and the reorganization of education started under the North American occupation. Romañach is recognized as one of the most able professors in the development of Cuban art, after Juan Bautiste Vermay and Miguel Melero.20th Century The commercialization of art did not begin until after 1916, with the Salón de Bellas Artes. Previously there were no real exhibition rooms available. Only the Academy itself and exhibitions which were organized in the Pabellón de Educación in the Quinta de Molinos existed as channels of distribution. Cultural institutions such as the Atheneum and the Academy for Art and Literature (1910) developed with private support. The Asociación de Pintores y Escultores cubanos was founded to represent the work of Cuban artists and to organize the annual Salón de Bellas Artes. At the beginning of the twenties a new generation of intellectuals surfaced in the conflict-ridden political and social panorama. The magazine Avances (1927) was the fundamental place to accommodate new ideas and artistic debate. Later it was to be the publications Verbum (1930), Espuela de Plata (1940) and Orígenes (in the fifties). In 1937 forward-thinking artists founded the Estudio Libre de Pintura y Escultura, promoting such fields of art as wood carving and mural painting which had been neglected by the Academy, and the "First Salon of Modern Art" was inaugurated. As in any avant-garde movement, the artists tried to transform society through culture. Those of this period who were to become masters of modern Cuban art also drew from Mexican mural painting. Victor Manuel La gitana tropical

Antonio Gattorno ¿Quieres más café Don Nicolás?

Serigraphy had been employed from time to time in Cuba since the beginning of the century. This contemporary printing technique was originally used mainly for graphic - publishing and industrial - applications, and its introduction to Cuba (about 1910) was one of the first in the world. Amongst the forerunners of the Cuban avant-garde, Victor Manuel deserves particular mention, testing new forms from the basis of the figurative and bequeathing a symbol in the history of Cuban art with his picture La Gitana Tropical. In the third decade, modern art in Cuba finally became consolidated. This is the first moment of the turning point in Cuban painting, uniting the intimacy of Antonio Gattorno; the guajiros (farmers) of Eduardo Abela; the sensuality of Carlos Enríquez, the sociopolitical criticisms of Marcelo, the drama of an artistic world, the despair and agony of Fidelio Ponce; the African roots of Cuban culture emphasized by Wilfredo Lam and the still life, combined with elements of Cuban architecture of Amelia Peláez. Also belonging to this group are Arístides Fernández and René Portocarrero.The 1940s and 1950s mark the second moment in Cuban sculpture. In this process of the continued modernization of art, a new avant-garde developed. It coincided with trends in international art which was no longer focused on Europe but on North America. Abstractionism arrived in the country and provoked the Contrabienale of 1953. Raúl Martínez founded the group Los 11 (Group of Eleven), the abstract Informalists, and then the Concrete artists, independent creative artists who engaged in geometric abstraction: Sandú Darié, Salvador Corratgé, Luis Martínez Pedró, Loló Soldevilla and Pedro de Oraá. The masters Antonia Eiriz and Servando Cabrera Moreno turned their attention gradually to Expressionism. In the forties Cuban serigraphy, in connection with political posters, enjoyed a wide distribution. The merging of serigraphy and the poster form created a poster art with its own characteristics, which became obvious from 1943 through film posters in particular (due to the boom in Mexican and Argentinean films); a serigraphic link which continues without interruption to the present. Amelia Peláez Hibisco

Servando Cabrera Moreno Héroes Bajo el sol

Cuban art from 1959 to the present represents the Revolutionary period. The serigraphic heritage was adopted by the Revolution in the first few months of 1959. The graphic arts experienced an extraordinary boom through the poster art of the ICAIC (Instituto Cubano de Arte e Industria Cinematográfica = Cuban Institute for Cinematic Art and Industry). Cultural polices have left little room for deviation from the official norm and most art produced is propaganda art and as such, the Cuban Revolutionary school remains a unique phenomenon in the Spanish Caribbean.

HistoryIt is thought that Cuba was first inhabited by South Americans in 3500BC. The Spanish didn't arrive in Cuba until the 15th century. Christopher Columbus sighted Cuba in 1942, and saw it as a beautiful place. The Spanish ignored the island and made their first base on the island of Hispaniola. In 1512, Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar led 300 Spaniards to Cuba and took over the land. They killed many Indians in the process, although Velázquez was not in favor of killing the people who had been living there. The explorers established large estates which enslaved the Indians. In 1542, the system was abolished although the slavery and disease brought by the Spanish had wiped out all but about 5,000 Indians. Cuba had become under an increasing threat of attack by the British. They had already taken over the surrounding islands. On June 6, 1762, Cuba fell under British rule. The British captured Havana and occupied it for 11 months. The British brought 4000 African slaves to Cuba, and expanded Cuba's international trading. Due to the increase of labor from the slaves, Cuba became the largest producer of sugar. In 1820 Cuba became the worlds largest producer of sugar, since Haiti's economy, their biggest competitor, was in the midst of a slave uprising. Between 1810, and 1825, Cuba and Puerto Rico were the only remaining Spanish colonies in the western hemisphere. Spanish loyalists fled to Cuba in masses from the former Spanish colonies. In 1868, Cuba launched independence. After 10 years and 200,000 deaths, Cuba was grated freedom. In more recent times, the US has gained control of many things in Cuba. Soon, Fidel Castro became prime minister, and began giving schooling etc. In the past three decades however, Cuba has been under much criticism for human rights.MusicThe African Slaves brought with them rhythm and ritual dances. These songs then mixed with the Spanish guitars and melodies. The new form of music was them Americanized. The modern party dance form of the "Conga Line" was originated by slaves shackled together, as many of the Cuban dances are associated with Afro-Cuban religions. One of the most popular forms of Cuban music is son, which was formed in the hills of Oriente before the turn of the century. Son incorporated guitars, tres (a small Cuban stringed instrument with three pairs of strings), double bass, bongos, claves, maracas and voice. Other forms of music, such as Mambo, bolero, salsa and chachachá all derived from this form.ArtThe first form of Cuban art is cave painting. Later testimonials included the cartographies of the island, combined with impressions and myths developed by chroniclers.

Unlike the other Latin American colonies, the island during the 15th and 16th centuries was very poor and neglected economically and therefore also of little significance culturally. Foreign artists streamed to Cuba, the "key to the New World", and a great number of paintings were brought from Spain to furnish chapels and churches. Art had a cult function before it became an expression of the culture in any real sense. In the colonial period, (which historically spans four centuries), only the 18th and above all the 19th centuries are significant in terms of the creation of Cuban art. This was the first time that art was thought of in Cuba as an occupation. The artists were mulattos or blacks - self-taught people who exchanged lessons with each other; they were regarded as craftsmen. José Nicolás de la Escalera y Domínguez is the first Cuban painter, with the exception of Tadeo Chirino from Santiago, who, although sixteen years younger, developed a work with more inaccuracies and primitivism.

National painting began to take shape from the mid 19th century onward. Taste and the appreciation of painting developed in Cuba at the same pace as the intellectual environment of the island was infused with new activities. Romanticism made its appearance in the paintings of this era with landscape paintings.The commercialization of art did not begin until after 1916, with the Salon de Bellas Artes. Prior to that, the portrait represented a two-sided relationship, history was linked more to the state, and the allegorical was attributable to education. The Asociación de Pintores y Escultores cubanos was founded to defend the work of Cuban artists against foreign ones, and to organize the annual Salón de Bellas Artes. Whilst the peninsular sector enjoyed Spanish painting, the ruling oligarchy mainly invested in foreign models, in that production which was dedicated to their cultural style of life. The revolution in sculptural art, introduced in Europe by Cezanne, Gauguin, van Gogh …, with the modern - ism , appeared in Cuba with a delay of two decades. Portrait and landscape subjects demanded a return to significance in their own right and were created using other artistic techniques, with the exception of oil on canvas. Those of this period who were to become masters of modern Cuban art drew inspiration from these sources and from Mexican mural painting, until a personal and deeply Cuban work was created.

The 40s and 50s mark the second moment in Cuban sculpture. In this process of the continued modernization of art, a new avant-garde developed; this time coinciding with trends in international art which was no longer focused on Europe but on North America. Abstractionism arrived in the country and provoked the Contrabienale of 1953. The aforementioned artists adapted their work to these new influences. Cuban art of the previous four decades represents the revolutionary period, its continuity and the completion of a process of maturing. The sixties encouraged heterogeneity, plurality and freedom of expression, optimism and trust in order to emphasize the changes taking place in the country. Humorous drawings, based on everyday realities, developed along broad lines. The decade of the 70s was a time when sketches and graphic art flourished. In the 80s, emancipation had been researched and announced in terms of collective approaches. In the present decade it is difficult to form groups for the very reason that it is a time of individualism and subjectivism. The openness and flexibility of power makes diversity possible. The generation of the 70s remains latent and, together with well-known names, a whole series or younger artists appear.The history of Cuban art would be incomplete if art in exile, centered mainly on the USA and Paris, were to be excluded. It encompasses the production of the old masters who left the country as well as those of Arte Calle of the eighties, the so-called generation of Mariel and others, who had to adapt their works to suit the requirements of the market. Also those living in Mexico, Paris or Madrid who traveled to Miami after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the generation which trained abroad, Arturo Rodríguez, Juan González and Hernán García from the generation from Miami). We know nothing of the development and fate of any of these.

Cuban painting began in earnest in the 18th century with such artists as José Nicolás de la Escalera and Vicente Escobar. Late 18th- and early 19th-century artists were influenced by newly developed European and American printing techniques in lithography, a process that reproduced paintings cheaply. Suddenly the middle class was able to afford art, and artists created works for a new audience. Costumbrismo, an art form that satirized social types within Cuban society, was particularly popular beginning in the 1840s and 1850s. Victor Patricio de Landaluze, a painter and cartoonist, is the most recognized artist of this type. His oil paintings and watercolors stereotype the farmer, landowner, slave, and Afro-Cuban santeros (religious practitioners). Romantic landscape painting also characterized this period and idealized nationalism not in political terms but in an attachment to the island’s natural habitat.With the introduction of European avant-garde styles in the 1920s and 1930s, a new generation of painters, such as Victor Manuel, Eduardo Abela, and Carlos Enríquez, concerned themselves with black and mulatto components of Cuban society. Their interests complemented anthropologist Fernando Ortíz’s argument that Afro-Cuban culture formed the distinguishing aspect of Cuban identity. Other painters, such as Fidelio Ponce de Leon or Aristides Fernández, followed a different path by depicting certain dramatic or religious aspects of the human condition. Post-1930s painters such as Amelia Pelaez, Rene Portocarrero, and Mariano Rodríguez were linked to the literary group of Origenes and depicted modern, abstract variations of typically Cuban architecture features, such as domestic interiors, stained glass windows, and church facades.During the 1950s a new group of painters, known as El Grupo de los 11, challenged the aesthetics of the former masters by introducing the abstract tendency with emphasis on geometric form and color rather than realism. Wifredo Lam worked most of his life in Paris and was influenced by Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, but he returned to Cuba in 1966 after the revolution to become a master teacher. His works incorporated surrealism while often featuring Afro-Cuban images.After the 1959 revolution a number of painters left Cuba and established themselves mainly in Madrid and Paris. However, younger generations of artists both in Cuba and in exile introduced new and exciting dimensions to Cuban art. Between 1960 and 1980 much of Cuban art, particularly poster art, portrayed positive images of the revolution. Artists used simple materials to compose images of heroic sacrifice and military battles that brought socialism to the Americas and the world.In the 1980s, as the problems of the revolutionary experiment became increasingly clear to most Cubans, a generation of artists in the island produced blatant criticism of the government. Their works derided incompetence, corruption, and hopelessness, and they even depicted scenes of torture, escape, and suicide. Many of these artists eventually chose exile over remaining in Cuba. More recently Cuban art often reflected individual responses to isolation and frustration as well as the difficulties of daily life, which was a less theoretical, but no less serious, denunciation of the government.

CUBAN ARTWhile diverging widely in styles, influences, methods, materials, and even locations, an art identified with Cuba and Cuban culture grew and developed to international acclaim in the last decades of the twentieth century. In 1984 when Cuba established the Biennial of Havana - an event designed to showcase contemporary art from Latin America (and later the Third World), the art world was taken by surprise.Artists and critics from North America and Europe who visited Cuba in the 80’s were startled by the fact that a communist country, still embroiled in Cold War politics and suffering an embargo imposed by the U.S., could produce a group of artists who could create, as one critic put it, “a new exuberant art that builds bridges between kitsch, folklore, popular religion, and postmodernism...”.It is surprising and revealing that a small island, lagging in global communication, can produce so many excellent contemporary artists of such high technical accomplishment and with an altogether fresh voice.Part of the explanation lies in post-revolutionary attitude towards the arts. Art literacy was an integral part of the cultural program and was seen as a crucial vehicle to achieve cultural change. The founding in 1976 of the Instituto Superior de Arte, a five year graduate school offering degrees in the visual arts, theatre and music, represented a major investment in education and helped to produce one of the best-educated populations in the Caribbean.Contemporary Cuban art is riveting, magical and full of surprises. It is a rich interplay of European traditions and native cultures - fusing the religious beliefs and cultural traditions of the African presence, incorporating all the dimensions of the imagination; celebrating the body, the senses and relations between humans; and exploring the reality of the revolution and the endless struggle for a political ideal.

The diversity of the work shown here attests to the creative and technical achievement of the artists on this island nation.The works range from hand-pulled prints that utilize a range of Printmaking techniques, to drawings, to oils, and a variety of mixed media.By today’s market standard, many of these works are vastly undervalued due largely to the relative isolation of the Cuban art market. We hope you enjoy the value and selection we offer here.

A boom in Cuban art has generated an explosion of fakes. What happened first to Wifredo Lam is now happening to his Cuban contemporaries and successors. By Mark Hunter

Lam in his studio in the 1960sThe door to Lou Laurin Lam's Paris apartment, on a quiet street near the Bastille, is armor-plated—but not because the place is packed with treasures. It's not thieves the widow of the Cuban painter Wifredo Lam needs protection from, but art dealers and collectors. As the author of the highly regarded catalogue raisonné of her late husband's works and sole uncontested judge of their authenticity, Lou Lam has the power to make people very angry. A few years ago, a dealer was so enraged by her negative judgment on a painting that he assaulted her. (Luckily a family friend was there to throw him out.) Since that day, she does not admit anyone to the apartment when she is alone. "We make them leave the picture for at least a day," says her son Esquiledo, a 37-year-old pilot with an art-history degree who now spends most of his time helping his mother protect Lam's heritage from a plague of forgeries. "And we communicate the answer by letter, so the reaction can happen somewhere else."Much against her will, Lou Lam has found herself at the center of a crisis in a major new sector of the art market, as a boom in Cuban art has generated an explosion of fakes. The boom began with the market's rediscovery of Lam in 1979, three years after a stroke had left him partially paralyzed. (He died in 1982 at the age of 80.) In fall 1979 Sotheby's sold a 1943 oil for $104,500—a breakthrough that turned into a trend in 1984, when no fewer than 58 Lams were sold by Christie's and Sotheby's, with the top price climbing from $198,000 to $214,000 between the spring and fall sales. The escalation hasn't stopped. Last May a 1943 oil, La mañana verde (Green Morning), sold at Sotheby's for $1,267,500, about 12 times the price of a comparable work two decades ago.Simultaneously, Lam's oeuvre became a template for forgery on a vast scale. Since 1992 alone, Lou Lam has approved a total of 310 authentic works, and turned thumbs down on approximately twice as many fakes—"an average of 100 per year," says Esquiledo. The appearance in 1996 of the first volume of her catalogue raisonné (published by Acatos, in Lausanne), covering about 1,000 works from the period 1923 to 1960 has slowed the traffic (since January the Lams have seen only a dozen new fakes) without stopping it. Last year, for example, Christie's was offered what Fernando Gutierrez, vice-president and head of the Latin American department, calls "an extremely well done" fake Lam, a work on paper that purported to come from a series of studies for Lam's 1943 masterpiece, The Jungle. Had it been genuine, says Gutierrez, the piece would have been worth $200,000.What happened first to Lam is now happening on a massive scale to his Cuban contemporaries and successors. An ARTnews investigation in the United States, France, and Cuba reveals that not just Lam but Cuban art as a whole is being corrupted and undermined by forgery on a massive scale. There are "thousands of fakes," charges the Miami-based publisher Ramón Cernuda, a leading collector of Cuban art. He says he has been offered "in excess of 500 forgeries" since he began collecting at the end of the 1970s. Miami gallery owner Gary Nader, a leader in the field and publisher of The Latin-American Art Price Guide, asserts that he has seen "millions of dollars in fakes" in private homes and galleries. In his opinion, "95 percent of Cuban paintings on the market are fakes."In 1993 Lou Lam wrote on the back of a photo of the painting below: "l'oeuvre...n'est pas de le main de" (is not from the hand of) Wifredo Lam. A Florida dealer changed her certificate to read: "l'oeuvre...est bien de" (is certainly from) Lam's hand. But a second dealer, to whom the picture was offered, got suspicious and sent the certificate back to Lou.

Juan Martínez, associate professor of art history at Florida International University in Miami and author of Cuban Art and National Identity: The Vanguardia Painters, says that in the past three years about 40 percent of the pictures he has been asked to authenticate were fakes. Likewise, Marta Gutierrez—a dealer who serves as Sotheby's associate and representative for Puerto Rico, and who bought pictures directly from Wifredo Lam—thinks that 50 percent of the Cuban paintings people brought to her gallery in the mid-1990s were fakes. Her son Fernando, of Christie's, who worked in her gallery from 1982 to 1996, puts the figure at 70 percent or more.The vendors are not all innocent. The Lams believe that of the hundred-odd people who personally brought them works to examine during that period--about half, they say, were collectors, with the rest divided between go-betweens (or "runners") and galleries--two out of five were not acting in good faith. Those numbers suggest that the traffic in forged Cuban works is now the domain of organized networks, operating on an international scale. There are "networks of dealers," Esquiledo says, "who present [fake] pictures first in the U.S., then in Europe. If they're Spanish-speaking, they'll start with Miami then Mexico, then Spain, and finally Paris."Lou Laurin Lam has the right to separate true from false.The Lams almost certainly never encounter the more savvy forgers, because French law (unlike American and Cuban law) gives them, as Lam’s heirs, a droit morale, or "moral right," over Lam's work. This means that they alone decide officially what is authentic and what is fake. If they believe a work is fake, they can file a complaint that will result in its confiscation and destruction if it is on French soil. They have done just that in 80 cases involving 130 pictures, by Esquiledo's count. But that power to seize and destroy a fake also gives pause to a collector who suspects he has one. As Gary Nader points out, "How do you get your money back if you have no evidence?"The Lams reply that seizing fakes is the only sure way to get them out of circulation. This spring a photograph of a forgery the family first saw in 1996 was sent to them by an Italian who claimed it had belonged to his father, who was missing from the previous provenance. "We've been shown the same picture twice in two weeks," recounts Esquiledo, "with two different grandfathers in the provenance."The first sign of the coming flood of fake Lams appeared in 1980, when a gallery near Ghent, Belgium, put on an exhibition of 53 pictures by Wifredo Lam and 67 other works by various modern masters, which were all fakes. Also on display was a fake telegram from Lou Lam stating her regret at missing the opening. (The forger later went to prison.)Prior to that, Lou had seen occasional fakes of her husband's works from his Italian period in the 1960s and '70s--"some drawings, some pastels, a few paintings," she recalled during a series of conversations in her Paris home. Her own large ceramic works and mixed-media canvases fill the apartment, alongside Lam's collection of African and Pacific Island wood masks and sculptures, and a wrought-iron door from their former home in Italy that he decorated with sheet-metal cutouts of horned gods. Born in Stockholm in 1934, Lou Laurin met Lam at a Paris gallery opening in 1955 and married him in 1960.Lou Lam likes a good joke, and that was how she regarded those early fakes. "They were pretty gross," she says--nothing that could fool a serious dealer or collector--and she even considered them normal. After all, she points out, "there have been fakes in Italy since the Middle Ages."But more than a dubious Latin tradition was involved here. Historical and social forces were about to turn Lam into the breakthrough figure for the market in modernist and contemporary Cuban art. The sense of impending changes in a closed society, coupled with access to new or rediscovered genres of art, excited collectors--and speculators--as the 1980s came to an end. That excitement has since been sustained by what Juan Martínez calls "the myth of the last Communist bastion," which adds cachet to artists touched by Castro's revolution. And there is the added element of rarity. From the beginning of the boom in Cuban art, Martínez notes, "there was a vacuum in the market--lots of demand and no supply, because the art was in the Cuban museums, locked up."Lam fit the role of the first Latin American "crossover" artist in part because he had lived and worked in many countries. Of Afro-Cuban descent, he assimilated European modernism without sacrificing his own heritage. Born in 1902, he set sail for Europe in 1923, after finishing his education in working class public schools, on a scholarship reserved for "a young person of color in need." His first wife and infant son died of tuberculosis in 1931 as he was struggling to launch his painting career in Madrid, and rage at poverty helped draw him to the Left. He fought on the losing side of the Spanish Civil War, was wounded, and followed the Republican exodus in 1938 to Paris, where he became a friend of Picasso ("Love at first sight," Lam later recalled) and the Surrealists. The following year, Picasso found Lam a Paris dealer, Pierre Loeb--who, when Picasso brought him to Lam's studio for the first time, remarked that Lam "is influenced by the Negroes." To which Picasso replied furiously, "He's got the right, he is a Negro!"Picasso realized that Lam was no primitive; on the contrary, he represented the fusion of Cuba's naive tradition with European esthetics. He was the perfect reply to the Cubists' fascination with African art. It was after his return to Cuba in 1941--he had fled occupied France--that he fully achieved a synthesis of Cubist technique, Surrealist sensibility, and animistic, voodoo-influenced subject matter. In his best-known work, The Jungle, deities that look like composites of animals, plants, and humans, skulls rolling at their feet, seem to march out of a nightmare into the space around the viewer.In the early 1940s, he began to exhibit at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York. At the war's end, he resumed traveling again--to Haiti, France, Italy, Venezuela, and New York. By the 1950s another of his trademark images, the femme-cheval-- half woman, half horse--had become a central motif. He abandoned his Cuban residence on April 8, 1958, the day before the general strike that heralded Castro's 1959 victory, leaving behind what Esquiledo Lam estimates at 75 to 80 important works--the family has never received an exact accounting from the Cubans--and an unknown number of drawings. Before leaving, Lam hurriedly burned many pieces that he considered worthless, but he didn't have time to destroy them all. Other works may have been looted by burglars and soldiers from both sides; Lam's home was near a military base--an area that all but violent gangs had fled as the end approached. Esquiledo remembers his father later accepting the nationalization of his paintings, saying "It's good for the people; they can see my work."Despite generally friendly relations with the revolutionaries--Lam declined Castro's invitation to become minister of culture in 1962 on the grounds that he was an artist, not a politician, recalls Esquiledo--he moved back to Europe, and eventually settled in Albisola, Italy. But he remained a patriot. When the Cuban government offered a blatantly propagandistic collective painting to the Salon of May in Paris in 1967, the center of the wheel-shaped piece was by Lam.From the start, judging by the family's files, fakes circulated most rapidly in the countries where Lam had lived and worked, such as Spain, Italy, and France, as well as in the Cuban exile community in South Florida. Last year a sale of Cuban art at the Ansorena auction house in Madrid fell flat after word spread among collectors that there were problems with the pieces on sale. Today the traffic is no longer confined to those markets. One forgery the Lams first identified in 1992 (bundled in a Swedish collection of 23 pictures, all fakes) later turned up in Florida, and was offered to a gallery in Germany last spring.The fact that Lam traveled and worked in so many places affords multiple opportunities for forgers seeking to establish an authentic looking provenance. A case in point was reported by Pierre Loeb's son Albert, who knew Lam as a child in Cuba, where his family joined the artist after fleeing Nazi-occupied France. He recalls that a few years ago, an employee in his Paris gallery was approached by a man who wanted him to steal exhibition stickers that could be applied to the backs of fake Lams.Daniel Lelong, whose first Lams were purchased from the estate of Pierre Matisse and whose Paris gallery has held an exclusive tract on the sale of works belonging to the Lam family since 1988, says, "It has happened that people--dealers, collectors, runners--show up here, saying, 'I've got things by Lam,' and ask for certificates. Maybe 50 percent of them are acting in good faith." He provides a certificate, he says, only when "I have previously sold the work, never for things that I haven't sold." In the current market a Lam without a certificate from Lou Lam is immediately suspect--a tribute to the respect accorded her catalogue raisonné. She charges 1,400 French francs, about $250, for an initial consultation and a fee if the work is authentic, ranging from $300 for a drawing or pastel to $10,000 for a major painting.FROM LEFT Collector Francisco García, with friends Marcelino Alvarez and Ramón Cernuda, picketing the Alfredo Martínez gallery in Coral Gables.There are such large quantities of Cuban fakes, and so many of them are skillfully done, that even experts have been burned. Cernuda, who is considered a mentor by many other collectors, bought a fake Tomás Sánchez from Lumbreras Arts, Inc., of Miami for $16,000 in 1992. (The Eleventh Circuit Court of Dade County awarded him the price of the picture plus interest in 1995.) In September Cernuda and fellow collector Francisco García picketed the Alfredo Martínez gallery in Miami, wearing paintings by Cuban artists García had purchased at the gallery that he subsequently decided were fakes. A person answering the phone at the gallery said Martínez was traveling and could not be reached.Sánchez, born in 1928, symbolizes both the current generation of Cuban painters and the rapidity with which forgers have seized on their works. He emerged as the leader of the Volumen Uno group after winning the Joan Miró Prize in Barcelona in 1980. Granted political asylum by the United States in 1993, he currently divides his time between Miami and Costa Rica.In the past six months, Miami dealer Jorge Sorí, who worked with Sánchez on an exclusive contract from 1993 to 1996, sold two of his medium-size pictures for a total of $180,000, and another Sánchez set a record price for the artist of $310,500 at Christie's last May. As his prices have risen, so has the volume of fakes: "In the past five years," says Sorí, "I've seen 300 fakes of this artist." Sorí has also seen fakes of works by Lam and Amelia Peláez, the modernist painter and ceramist who died in Havana in 1968.A landscape by Tomás Sánchez (above) sold at Christie's last year for $310,500, an artist's record. The landscape below is a fake.

One of the more spectacular public incidents to date in this traffic occurred last November, when Christie's withdrew from its fall sale six important Cuban works estimated at a total of $500,000. One of the forged artists was Mario Carreño, who was born in 1913 and fled the revolution in 1959 for Chile, where he still lives. Another was René Portocarrero, who died in Havana in 1985 at the age of 73. Mariano Rodríguez (1912-90) and Estéban Chartrand (1825-89), about whom Cernuda is writing a biography, completed the group.The decision to withdraw the pictures was based in part on Christie's suspicion that someone in the Cuban government has been helping forgers. One of the withdrawn pictures "was accepted for sale on the basis of a certificate from an expert in Cuba--and the certificate was fake," says Fernando Gutierrez. "The expert confirmed it, and also that the picture was fake." The picture was supposed to be a Portocarrero, according to Cernuda, and the expert who had allegedly signed the certificate was Ramón Vázquez, head of the department of Cuban painting at the Museum of Fine Arts in Havana, whom Juan Martínez considers the leading expert on Cuban modernists of the 1930s and 1940s. Instead, Cernuda believes, the certificate probably came from a stock of "at least 100" documents stolen from the Cuban National Museums by someone within the bureaucracy, which were then sold to forgers. Most of the high-ranking Cuban cultural officials ARTnews contacted by phone and fax declined requests to comment.This is not the first time that what are believed to be stolen Cuban government certificates bearing forged signatures have appeared on the market. One recently came into the hands of Juan Martínez. The certificate accompanied a picture that Martínez was asked to examine, and it was supposedly signed by Ramón Vazquez. The trouble was, the signature of Vazquez, and that wasn't his signature. I called Vazquez"—whom Martínez had previously met during the Cuban expert's two visits to Miami—"and he said it wasn't his signature." Soon afterward, Martínez returned to Cuba for a visit (he was born on the island and left as a child in 1966) and was told by "a contact in the government's cultural bureaucracy" that "someone in the national museums" had acquired blank certificates and sold them. "They were used and signed by different individuals. Depending on what was faked, they would use the 'signature' of the right specialist."Several fakes in the Lams' files are accompanied by apparently authentic certificates, bearing forged signatures, from Cuban government agencies. On one such certificate, purporting to be from the Fondo de Bienes Culturales and dated May 1990, the signatures of the buyer and the approving official appear to be written in the same hand. There is another danger sign: the certificate spells Lam's name as "Wifredo Oscar de la Concepción Lam y Castilla," which is not how it was recorded at his birth in Havana in 1902. It wasn't until 1923 that a Spanish functionary carelessly dropped the "l" from "Wilfredo" on an immigration form, a mistake the artist joyfully adopted in his signature. Warns Juan Martínez, "If you have a certificate from the Cuban National Museums, you're recommended to fax it to them to see if it's real." Christie's has reached the same conclusion, says Fernando Gutierrez: "At this point, we confirm the authenticity of each certificate, too. If they can fake a painting, they can fake a certificate."A Carreño that was withdrawn from Christie's November sale last year raises an equally troubling issue: that fake paintings may be accompanied by real certificates--in this case, a certificate signed by the artist's wife, Ida Gonzales de Carreño. (The artist is unable to move or speak as the result of a stroke.) Laboratory tests showed that the pigment contained traces of titanium white, a substance for which "the likelihood of the artist using it at the time was not high," says Gutierrez. "It was withdrawn for that reason, basically," he says, adding that he "won't rule out the possibility that the picture is good."The "Carreño" above was withdrawn from Christie's sale last November, although it was accompanied by a certificate from the artist's wife. Carreño's Patio Colonial Cubano (below) sold for $442,500 at Christie's last May.

The first historical witnessesThe first signs come from cave painting: later testimonials were the cartographies of the island, combined with impressions and myths developed by the chroniclers. Along the long historic path, the mural paintings executed, in the most part anonymously, on the interior and exterior of houses from the colonial period must be mentioned. On the basis of their character and craftsmanship, they have to be labeled "folk art". Natural pigments and some inferior quality colors were used, and the later the paintings were executed, the more complex and higher quality the techniques.

Cape paintings in Cave Number 1, "Punta del Este", Isla de la Juventud.The 15th and 16th centuriesUnlike the other Latin American colonies, the island during the 15th and 16th centuries was very poor and neglected economically and therefore also of little significance culturally. Foreign artists streamed to Cuba, the "key to the New World", and a great number of paintings were brought from Spain to furnish chapels and churches. With the appearance of the names of the panel painters Juan Camargo and Juan de Salas y Argüillo, it is evident that the art of carving figures of saints had not yet been replaced by painting. In the course of the following century the island began to blossom due to the fleets which put in on their route taking treasures from Mexico to Spain. Military might shared power with the clerics, who, concerned with the furnishing and adornment of the churches, promoted the making of copies of religious works imported from the metropolis, without showing any interest in the actual creation of any such works. Art had a cult function before it became an expression of the culture in any real sense. Only a few works from these distant years have survived to the present. There are only very imprecise references in documents, so that a large number of anonymous works exist today, and an equally long list of unknown artists.Ancient map of the Island of Cuba by Pieter Vander. Vignette of a map showing parts of Western America and Cuba, by Hyeronymi Benzoni, engraving by Theodoro de Bry, 1514.The Colonial Period (especially the 18th and 19th centuries)In the colonial period, (which historically spans four centuries), only the 18th and above all the 19th centuries are significant in terms of the creation of Cuban art. Francisco Javier Báez is the first Cuban graphic artist who, in addition to religious themes, also designed drawings for tobacco and cigar brands in xylography (a technique which was introduced to Cuba in 1723). Foreign graphic artists and illustrators, above all French, came to the island and depicted landscapes, customs and places in the form of albums. The graphic arts, besides their artistic value, were the only means of honestly depicting the events and their consequences, including folklore. The first graphic document on the Toma de la Habana (The capture of Havana) by the English was made by Dominique Serres in the year 1762. The lithographic publication was made one year later in France. The six views of the town, realized by the North American Elías Durnford between 1764 and 1765, form the precursors of the Cuban Scenes by foreign artists in the 19th century. Towards the end of the 18th century the Cuban cultural panorama changed as a result of developments achieved so far, which were mainly due to the growth in the sugar industry, which was decisive in the involvement of the country in industrial capital. These were the times of enlightenment.... The Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País (Economic Society of the Friends of the Country) was founded, schools and universities multiplied, the public library was expanded and advertisements by teachers of art and portrait painters appeared in the press. In its origins, painting bore a mystical and religious character before it became aristocratic or popular. It was regarded as a profitable activity, as a profession. The artists were mulattos or blacks - self-taught people who exchanged lessons with each other; they were regarded as craftsmen. José Nicolás de la Escalera y Domínguez is the first Cuban painter, with the exception of Tadeo Chirino from Santiago, who, although sixteen years younger, developed a work with more inaccuracies and primitivism. Escalera painted the picture of a negro slave in the mural paintings of the church of Santa María del Rosario for the first time. The native painters and pre-academicians, Juan del Río and Vicente Escobar y de Flores, favored religious and portrait painting (Captain Generals, aristocrats), in the style of European and above all Spanish paintings, which are based on callowness, great coldness and courtly stiffness. Escobar, the mulatto, who bought his title as a white man and was appointed royal Court Artist by the Spanish Queen, characterized the transition from the 18th to the 19th century.Autor: Esteban ChartrandTítulo: "El Baile"Técnica: óleo / telaDimensiones: 28 x 38 cmAño: 1879This last century is characterized by the boom in the sugar industry and the growing slave trade, combined with the concomitant rise of the native bourgeoisie and their search for representative appearance. The number of portraits commissioned, which displaced the earlier aristocratic portraits, increased. In about 1805 the bishop, Juan José Díaz de Espada y Landa, patron of science and art, entrusted the Italian, José Perovani, one of the foreign artists, who influenced Cuban art, with the frescoes of the Cathedral of Havana. This cleric and the intendant Alejandro Ramírez were the protagonists of the greatest cultural events of this period. In 1818 they founded the Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes, in order to win back painting from the hands of blacks and mulattos. This, the second academy in the Americas, after San Carlos in Mexico, had as its first director the Frenchman and pupil of the Master David, Juan Bautiste Vermay, who came to the country to continue the work of Perovanis. His main artistic work was the creation of the paintings in Templete. These represent the first Mass celebrated on that spot, the first Cabildo (local council) and the consecration of the small temple. The style of painting taught on the island reflected European trends which were already decades old. Autor: J.B. VermayTítulo: "Familia Manrique de Lara"Técnica: óleo / telaDimensiones: 190 x 150 cm Autor: Arburu Morell, J. FranciscoTítulo: "La familia González de Mendoza"Técnica: óleo / telaDimensiones: 90,5 x 159,5 cm The Academy proposed a method of representation, a particular ideal of beauty, a range of subjects. It supported the hedonistic sense of art, mimesis, and timelessness and in addition carried responsibility for the public, state and social orientation of culture. The realization of these ideals was far removed from contemporary reality, which only allowed representation with non-dominant discussions, as for example by means of caricature and illustration. Neoclassicism, the first form of expression adopted, lent the pictures a historical, mythological and allegorical context. Oil painting, the most traditional of all artistic techniques, was moderately cultivated. After the death of Juan Bautiste Vermay, the Academy was headed for a short time by the Cuban, Camilo Cuyás, the foreigners, Guillermo Francisco Colson, Juan Bautista Leclerc de Baume, Pierre - Frederic Mialhe Toussaint, Hércules Morelli, Augusto Ferrán, Fracisco Cisnero Gerrero and then the Cuban Miguel Melero Rodríguez. There followed mainly a French-Italian sequence of successors until the permanent presence of Meleros, the first Cuban Director in the last five years of the century, which coincided with the halcyon days of the Academy in Cuba. From this time onwards the directorship was to remain firmly in Cuban hands. This is the starting point for continuity in national painting. New initiatives and changes, such as the admission of women to the Academy, for example, at a time when no other institution offered this opportunity, first appeared under the leadership of this master. Besides his many paintings, he created the picture on the main altar of the chapel at the Cementerio Colón (cemetery). In this century graphic art is represented by Leonardo Barañano, Hipolito Garneray, Eduardo Laplante and also Federico Mialhe , whose three albums "Scenic Walk", "Picturesque Island of Cuba" and "The Island of Cuba" form the most complete graphic report. Small lithographic editions, linked to trade and advertisements, appeared from 1822 onwards following the founding of a workshop The brand bands of cigarillos and cigars were produced with great figurative display using lithography. They were the main driving force behind the development, growth and boom in this technique.National painting in the 19th centuryNational painting began to take shape from the mid 19th century onward. Taste and the appreciation of painting developed in Cuba at the same pace as the intellectual environment of the island was infused with new activities. In the political field the voices of Félix Varela, Tomás Gener, José Antonio Saco and Betancourt Cisneros were to be heard with predictions of freedom. At the same time other intellectuals sowed the seeds of native culture, amongst them Don José de la Luz y Caballero, Domingo del Monte y José María Heredia should be mentioned. Romanticism made its appearance in the paintings of this era with landscape paintings, influenced by the French schools of Barbizon and Fontainebleau, or by the North American school of Hudson River. Esteban Chartrand and Valentin Sanz Carta are examples of two opposing points of view, the former, a Cuban of French descent, created nostalgic and idealized landscapes bathed in twilight, in which the Cuban element of bohíos (farmhouses), ingenios (sugar factories) and palms can be recognized, and the latter, a Cuban from the Canaries, offered a more direct and realistic landscape flooded with tropical light. Amongst the landscape painters, the Belgian Henry Clennewerck and the Cuban Federico Fernández Cavada should be mentioned. At this time the genre painting of Juana Borrero, José Joaquín Tejada and Victor Patricio Landaluze emerged. The latter is mainly known for the large plastic and documentary value of his works. He worked in watercolors and oils, lending the pictures the transparency and luminosity of watercolor paintings. He also cultivated political caricatures, expressing in his pictures, as no other artist did, the Creole element with a fitting sense of observation, quality and fine humor. In the era of official academicism, which extended into the first decade of the 20th century, Juan Jorge Peoli, José Arburu y Morell, and Miguel Angel Melero deserve mention, as well as Guillermo Collazo Tejada; a controversial figure because of his separatist ideas in the field of politics and his dedication to conservative French painting in the field of art. The name of the incredible portrait painter, Federico Martínez Matos from Santiago, has to be included, whose entry to the Academy was doubted and whose unique work combines Spanish realism and Italian idealism. After their return from Europe, Armando García Menocal and Leopoldo Romañach Guillén contributed to the cultural renewal which found its positive aspect, favored by the new era, the new rulers, and the reorganization of education started under the North American occupation. They were appointed to teaching posts at the Academy, where they taught generations of Cuban artists. Menocal, who made sketches for an epic Cuban painting during his participation in the wars of independence, influenced the orientation of the first new artists of the Republic: Manuel Vega, Esteban Valderrama y de la Peña, Pastor Argudai … Romañach, on the other hand, is recognized as one of the most able professors in the development of Cuban art, after Juan Bautiste Vermay and Miguel Melero; a master of avant-gardism, which replaced decadent romanticism with naturalism, he worked with live models, taking as a pretext the portrait, in which the psychological representation of the model is of no interest. Both are recognized as artists who ended the 19th century with the highest repute, and who led Cuba into the 20th century and the transition to modern painting. Valderrama, Domingo Ramos and Romañach completed the mural paintings of the Aula Magna, [University of Havana], adhering to academicism, whilst the modernists took their first steps.At the beginning of the 20th centuryThe commercialization of art did not begin until after 1916, with the Salon de Bellas Artes. Prior to that, the portrait represented a two-sided relationship, history was linked more to the state, and the allegorical was attributable to education. There were no real exhibition rooms available to graduates, only the Academy itself and exhibitions which were organized in the Pabellon de Educación in the Quinta de Molinos existed as channels of distribution. The regional Spanish centers: Asturian, Canarian and Galician, were exhibition venues for Spanish artists and it was not until the 20th century, with the formation of the Republic and the participation of the Catalonians, that these institutions developed into symbols of power. As a result cultural institutions such as the Atheneum and the Academy for Art and Literature (1910) developed with private support. The Asociación de Pintores y Escultores cubanos was founded to defend the work of Cuban artists against foreign ones, and to organize the annual Salón de Bellas Artes.

Autor: Víctor ManuelTítulo: "Gitana Tropical"Técnica: óleo / telaDimensiones: 46.5 x 38 cmAño: 1929Ubicación: Museo Nacional de Cuba, HabanaAutor: Eduardo AbelaTítulo: "El triunfo de la Rumba"Técnica: óleo / telaDimensiones: 65 x 54 cmAño: 1928Autor: Carlos EnríquezTítulo: "El Rapto de las Mulatas"Técnica: óleo / telaDimensiones: 162.4 x 114.5 cmAño: 1938Ubicación: Museo Nacional de Cuba, Habana Whilst the peninsular sector enjoyed Spanish painting, the ruling oligarchy mainly invested in foreign models, in that production which was dedicated to their cultural style of life. The nouveau riche, indebted to the sugar boom after the first world war, were attracted to the works of representation, led by the proportions of the picture and its frame, but not by its craftsmanship. It was justly the intellectuals and the educated class who preferred Cuban production. At the beginning of the twenties a new generation of intellectuals surfaced in the conflict-ridden political and social panorama. The magazine Avances (1927) was the fundamental place to accommodate new ideas and artistic debate. Later it was to be the publications Verbum (1930), Espuela de Plata (1940) and Orígenes (in the fifties). In 1937 forward-thinking artists founded the Estudio Libre de Pintura y Escultura, promoting such fields of art as wood carving and mural painting which had been neglected by the Academy, and the "First Salon of Modern Art" was inaugurated. As in any avant-garde movement, the artists tried to transform society through culture. The revolution in sculptural art, introduced in Europe by Cezanne, Gauguin, van Gogh …, with the modern - ism , appeared in Cuba with a delay of two decades. Those of this period who were to become masters of modern Cuban art drew inspiration from these sources and from Mexican mural painting, until a personal and deeply Cuban work was created.Autor: Antonio GattornoTítulo: "¿Quieres más café, Don Nicolas?"Técnica: óleo / telaDimensiones: 120 x 100.5 cmAño: 1936Ubicación: Museo Nacional de Cuba, HabanaThis was a national art of renewal and anti-academic solutions. Portrait and landscape subjects demanded a return to significance in their own right and were created using other artistic techniques, with the exception of oil on canvas. In his watercolors and sketches ("painted caricatures" which were not regarded as paintings), Rafael Blanco presented himself as a pioneer in the search for new forms of expression and as a forerunner in the Cuban artistic avant-garde. The developments, parallel to the academic but not dominating, are those in which modernity could most easily be introduced: in the press, in caricatures (Torriente and Massaguer the main representatives) and in graphic designs on the title pages of journals (in the twenties the Revista Social was prominent). It must also be pointed out that serigraphy had been employed from time to time in Cuba since the beginning of the century. This contemporary printing technique was originally used mainly for graphic - publishing and industrial - applications, and its introduction to Cuba (about 1910) was one of the first in the world. Amongst the forerunners of the Cuban avant-garde Victor Manuel deserves particular mention, testing new forms from the basis of the figurative and bequeathing a symbol in the history of Cuban art with his picture "La Gitana Tropical". In the third decade, modern art in Cuba finally became consolidated. This is the first moment of the turning point in Cuban painting, uniting the intimism of Antonio Gattornos; the Guajiros [farmers] of Eduardo Abelas; the sensuality of Carlos Enriquez, the sociopolitical criticisms of Marcelo, the drama of an artistic world, the despair and agony of Fidelio Ponce; the African roots of our culture emphasized by Wifredo Lam and the still life, combined with elements of Cuban architecture of Amelia Pelaez. Also belonging to this group are Arístides Fernández, further removed from the general trends but with similar stimulus; Jorge Arche with his personalization of the subject of the portrait, and also Mariano Rodríguez, whose works are distinguished by their chromatic depiction.; René Portocarrero and the interiors from the colonial period, and other names such as Mirta Cerra, Roberto Diago and José Mijares.The 40s and 50sThe 40s and 50s mark the second moment in Cuban sculpture. In this process of the continued modernization of art, a new avant-garde developed; this time coinciding with trends in international art which was no longer focused on Europe but on North America. Abstractionism arrived in the country and provoked the Contrabienale of 1953. The aforementioned artists adapted their work to these new influences. Raúl Martínez founded the group Los 11 (Group of Eleven), the abstract Informalists, and then the Concrete artists, independent creative artists who engaged in geometric abstraction: Sandú Darié, Salvador Corratgé, Luis Martínez Pedró, Loló Soldevilla and Pedro de Oraá. The masters Antonia Eiriz and Servando Cabrera Moreno turned their attention gradually to Expressionism, along with Orlando Llanes. Despite his early death, Angel Acosta León plays an important role in the development of Surrealism.

Autor: Wilfredo LamTítulo: "La Silla"Técnica: óleo / telaDimensiones: 131 x 97.5 cmAño: 1943Ubicación: Museo Nacional de Cuba, Habana Autor: Marcelo PogolottiTítulo: "El Alba"Técnica: óleo / telaDimensiones: 81,5 x 101 cmAutor: Antonio GattornoTítulo: "Sorrentine Dancer"Técnica: óleo / telaDimensiones: 121.6 x 83 cmAño: 1948 In the forties Cuban serigraphy, in connection with political posters, enjoyed the widest and most comprehensive distribution of all times. The merging of serigraphy and the poster form created a poster art with its own characteristics, which became obvious from 1943 through film posters in particular (due to the boom in Mexican and Argentinean films); a serigraphic link which continues without interruption to the present. Parallel to this, serigraphic uses continue on a wide variety of mediums: card, paper, material, wood.... for publication and industrial purposes. This method underwent a notable development at the end of the forties, reaching its pinnacle in the fifties, a period in which spontaneous excursions of qualitative relevance occur in art serigraphy.Autor: Arístides FernándezTítulo: "Lavanderas"Técnica: óleo / telaDimensiones: 86.5 x 97 cmAño: Sin fechaUbicación: Museo Nacional de Cuba, HabanaCuban art of the previous four decades represents the revolutionary period, its continuity and the completion of a process of maturing. The sixties encouraged heterogeneity, plurality and freedom of expression, optimism and trust in order to emphasize the changes taking place in the country. The serigraphic heritage was adopted by the revolution in the first few months of 1959, adding new content, values and projections in the ideological and cultural fields. The graphic arts experienced an extraordinary boom through the poster art of the ICAIC (Instituto Cubano de Arte e Industria Cinematográfica = Cuban Institute for Cinematic Art and Industry),. Despite a substantial lack of material means, it achieved results of special significance with regard to expressive, esthetic, iconographic, formal, chromatic and technological aspects. Humorous drawings, based on everyday realities, developed along broad lines. The Cuban life style formed the actual basis of humorism, harking back to the previous century, the anti-colonial period and the time after the founding of the Republic in 1902.

Autor: Servando Cabrera MorenoTítulo: "Milicias campesinas"Técnica: óleo / telaDimensiones: 140 x 200 cmAño: 1962 Autor: Mariano RodríguezTítulo: "El sari blanco"Técnica: óleo / telaDimensiones: 125 x 97 cmAdigio Benítez and Carmelo Sobrino place peasants and workers at the center of their pictures; Raúl Martínez the heroes and the other artists deal with themes from their own specific realities. The masters of that remarkable generation, such as Servando Cabrera, Mariano Rodríguez, René Protocarrero, Amelia Pelaez, Wifredo Lam …. continue their work, reinforcing particular nuances in their themes and styles. In doing so they always occupy a prominent place in Cuban art, which, like the international movement too, is concerned with figuration. Antonia Eiriz left a permanent impression on many of the early graduates of the Escuela Nacional de Arte (National School of Art). Most of the graduates were of peasant stock and they were the ones who, in the following years, were to stimulate artistic developments.

The decade of the 70sThe decade of the 70s was a time when sketches and graphic art flourished, represented by: Roberto Fabelo, Pedro Pablo Oliva, Zaida del Río, Nelson Domínguez, Eduardo Roca (Choco) … Pop, integrated in a political-cultural framework, makes its appearance in the works of Raúl Martínez. Humberto Peña also presents a personal concept of this trend and, like José Luis Posada and Santiago Chago Armada was an important forerunner of the following generation. Alfredo Sosabravo was notable in this period for his particular sense of humor; Manuel Mendive for the subject, Afro, and a deliberate Primitivism; Ever Fonseca through the treatment of popular Cuban mythology and Flora Font through peasants´ legends. The Photorealism of Thomas Sánchez, César Leal, Nélida López, Gilberto Frómeta, Aldo Menéndez and Flavio Garciandía was prominent in the seventies through the adaptation of the themes of Cuban society to this language.

Autor: Mariano RodríguezTítulo: "Gallo con flores"Técnica: óleo / telaDimensiones: 99.7 x 121.7 cmAño: 1979 Autor: Tomás SánchezTítulo: "Antes de la Tormenta"Técnica: acrílico / telaDimensiones: 25.4 x 38.1 cmAño: 1987In the following years a network of cultural institutions developed offering specialized exhibitions. In 1963 a studio for serigraphy was installed in the UNEAC (Cuban Association of Writers and Artists) and in 1979 the Casas de las Américas organized a workshop where the works of Cuban and Latin American artists could be duplicated using serigraphy. However, it was not until 1983, with the foundation of the Taller Experimental de Serigrafía René Portocarrero that serigraphy became the method of duplication preferred by artists for the reproduction of their works, leading to a veritable boom in artistic serigraphy. The eighties mark the third turning point in our artistic production and a peak in the heyday of Cuban sculpture. A new generation of visual artists from the Instituto Superior de Arte (College of Art) were the driving force; for them artistic creation signified a cognoscitive, probing and intellectual motivation, in harmony with the times of "Desecularization" of art and in a time of the predominance of orthodox and schematic thought in national reality, against which the artist expresses his dissatisfaction. An emancipatory movement combining the hopes of the old avant-garde, and which causes a factor of non-communication between the artistic and the institutional sector to appear, is also a transgressing, desanctifying movement , which, in its language and poetry, integrates with the present Postmodernism. In general outlines the historic-political interpretation is reinforced by the analysis of historical values and patriotic symbols; the specific values of art are emphasized and appropriation is adopted, installations, ready mode, conceptual and factual, as well as ephemeral art: Happenings and Performance (the groups Puré and Arte Calle). The visual communication of folk art, kitsch, jokes, anthropological and nature-encompassing considerations, myths, the native element of our culture and the identity of Latin America and the third world have been adopted. New themes emerge, painting and other branches of artistic creation exchange relationships with each other, with the greatest possible freedom of technique, with mixed techniques preferred in many cases. The exhibition Volume I gives an impetus to expressing this new sensitivity. José Bedia and Ricardo Rodríguez Brey are seeking the roots of their native culture; José Toirac, Juan Ballester, Tanya Angulo and Ileana Villazón are reflecting on art. Rubén Torres Llorca and also Flabio Garciandía take folk art and its relationship to politics as their reference; Lázaro Saavedra deals with ideology, art and religion with great humor; Reynerio Tamayo follows the same lines by using humor against criticism and Ciro Quintana exercises criticism through Cuban humor. Carlos Rodríguez Cárdenas handles themes which appear problematic in their contemporary context: tourism, emigration, the mystification of political elements; Glexis Novoa creates visual works and installations, which allude to the values honored by political propaganda, René Francisco and Eduardo Ponjuán express the void of the postulates of socialist realism. Humberto Castro, Gustavo Acosta, Segundo Planes, Ana Alberina Delgado, Lázaro García , Félix Suazo, Leandro Soto, Arturo Cuenca, Luis Gómez, Gustavo Pérez Monzón and Consuelo Castañeda, are only a few of the names in a long list which have for many years drawn attention to the diversity of the panorama of contemporary Cuban sculpture and the difficulty of identifying any common characteristics, other than that of diversity itself.The emancipation of the 80sIn the 80s, emancipation had been researched and announced in terms of collective approaches. In the present decade it is difficult to form groups for the very reason that it is a time of individualism and subjectivism. The openness and flexibility of power makes diversity possible. The generation of the 70s remains latent and, together with well-known names, a whole series or younger artists appear, amongst whom are: Pedro Alvarez with his observations on the conquest and his island world; Sandra Ramos with her poetics on exile; Fernando Rodríguez, who works in polychromatic wood, in order to be a speaker for the blind artist Franciso de la Cal; Osvaldo Yero and his symbols in multicolored plaster, as well as Esterio Segura with his sculptures - altars, where pictures of all types and characters, alternating with sketches and metal engravings, meet.. Douglas Pérez, Aimee García, Rubén Alpízar, Elsa Mora and many others, and in alternative positions an even longer list of even greater diversity of forms of expression, emphasize opinions which assert the prestige of sculpture in Cuba. There is even a risk that, by naming a few, others may be offended at being excluded. As the change to esthetic painting became consolidated - the best example being Los Carpinteros, - without, however, completely supplanting the spirit of the installations, pre-conceptualism and the "ephemeral art" which characterized the 80s, and other ballast of previous decades, some of the forms of this era fuse together. In previous years the postmodernist language took over from the Modern the will of the avant-garde to transform society by means of art. But today this biting and hurtful criticism is balanced by irony, indirectness, a language full of conceptual and formal sharp-wittedness. In graphic art, the figure of Belkis Ayóns. who has been outstanding for several years, is now joined by Abel Barrosos, an innovator in the use of wood-block as a medium, breaking through the two-dimensional by constructing objects around which slogans of Cuban reality circle, announcing a glory at the end which, to a great extent, is created by the opportunities presented by the existence of the experimental workshops.

Autor: Pedro Pablo OlivaTítulo: "Alicia las tetas y una naranja"Técnica: óleo / telaDimensiones: 116.2 x 105 cmAño: 1992 Autor: Roberto FabeloTítulo: "Sirena en el muro del malecón"Técnica: óleo / telaDimensiones: 81 x 96 cmAño: 1998Cuban art is the focus in different contexts: the past because of the protagonism of many of its figures; present day art because perhaps in the high artistic consciousness of each creator, transcending the anecdotal, the descriptive and the superficial, lies his power and his principal interest.